Continuing from Lowell 3.12,
https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-low
ell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13937: 

 

[540] The analysis which I have just used to give you some notion of Genuine
Thirdness and its two forms of degeneracy is the merest rough blackboard
sketch of the true state of things; and I must begin the examination of
representations by defining representation a little more accurately. In the
first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word Representation to the
operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of the
representation. The concrete subject that represents I call a sign or a
representamen. I use these two words, sign and representamen, differently.
By a sign I mean anything which conveys any definite notion of an object in
any way, as such conveyers of thought are familiarly known to us. Now I
start with this familiar idea and make the best analysis I can of what is
essential to a sign, and I define a representamen as being whatever that
analysis applies to. If therefore I have committed an error in my analysis,
part of what I say about signs will be false. For in that case a sign may
not be a representamen. The analysis is certainly true of the representamen,
since that is all that word means. Even if my analysis is correct, something
may happen to be true of all signs, that is of everything that, antecedently
to any analysis, we should be willing to regard as conveying a notion of
anything, while there might be something which my analysis describes of
which the same thing is not true. In particular, all signs convey notions to
human minds; but I know no reason why every representamen should do so. 

 

[541] My definition of a representamen is as follows: 

A representamen is a subject of a triadic relation to a Second, called its
Object, for a Third, called its Interpretant, this triadic relation being
such that the Representamen determines its Interpretant to stand in the same
triadic relation to the same Object for some Interpretant. 

 

 

http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm }{ Peirce's Lowell Lectures of 1903

 

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